Cool beans.
This week was fantastic!
Pday was a do nothing day. Presidente Lanius already prohibited everything so Pday is just a bust. Kind of just a sit around and relax day. Got nothing against it, but I would like to play soccer/volleyball or something.
In District meeting we talked about a lot of things we needed to improve, Baptismal invites and people at church. It was kind of just a numbers type of training so our part wasn't very exciting but Elder Bochi gave an excellent training. He talked about a quote from President Gordon B. Hinckley. Talks about how we shouldn't settle for just being good missionaries. Which we are, I'm not gonna lie. But in it he talks about how we should be the best missionaries we can be. There is always room for improvement. It was just good. Elder José thinks he'll be transferred this next time and Bochi will be moved up to Zone Leader with me. I wouldn't mind that. He was a great companion/friend and a great missionary too. We would do well together. We knew going into this week that there was a lot of potential for the Zone to baptize a lot of people, but we didn't have any marked baptisms. Just miracles.
I'm going to just talk about the people we're teaching because this week just flew by. Arnedes and Letíca
They are awesome. The only problem is that they aren't married and Arndes has another wife somewhere and he has to divorce her. She has a kid with another dude and everything. He just has to get some money to pay a lawyer to fix everything up. He's in debt though and he has to work for a few more weeks to pay it off. It's complicated. But the dude is awesome. He loves the Book Of Mormon. As soon as he gets divorced/married it's in the water. We go to his house every other night to read something out of the Book Of Mormon and he just eats it up. He always says "amen brother". It's awesome. And people at his work talk bad about the Church all the time and he just defends the heck out of it. The other night he made us dinner. Chicken with macacheira(some type of root that tastes just like potato.) and lemon. With Goiaba juice. So simple but good. His house is very simple. One room with a mattress and a kitchen. He is the humblest guy ever but the coolest. Just ready to learn anything you say and is just excited. Its good to go to his house after a bad day of not teaching anybody who's interested. Just refreshing. Barely even have to talk because he talks the whole time and asks questions. But it has been a while since he's been to church. His back was hurting last week because he works with construction, and this week his boss was trying to pay him on Sunday so it got complicated with him moving the money around. He needs to go to church to maintain the excitement and receive the blessings. He'll be a leader in the church one day. Just gotta wait. It always seems like the best people have the hardest time getting baptized.
We taught this lady named Marilene. We only taught her like 2 times really fast because she's always in a hurry. But she accepted baptism and the next time we went back to check on her, her dad had said something to her that dissuaded her. She was baptized in the Catholic church and he said that this baptism would negate everything he had ever taught her. (She is 40 years old.) We taught her about the differences in the baptisms and how one is valid and the other is not. We testified and left her with the challenge to pray about it. She said she would and we could tell that she felt the spirit.
This week we found this family because of a brother in the ward who gave us a reference. The family is incomplete. The mom was baptized a long time ago but she doesn't go to church anymore and she didn't baptize her kids. We taught them and everyone seems pretty excited. The mom needs to divorce because she's in the same situation as Arnedes. The kids are cool. 10 year old boy and 21 year old girl. Then there are neighbors who are always there too. The house gets pretty rowdy and and there are interruptions but we're going baptize everyone and reactivate the mom. Her mom lives with her too and hasn't been baptized yet. It's a gold mine. José and I have to keep passing the message back and forth to keep our cool because the kids are just rowdy. It happens and you just have to deal with it and keep the spirit.
Edimilson and Simone got baptized in the Catholic this sunday. Edimilson still wants to know if the Book of Mormon is true "to know which of the churches is correct"... that's my boy.We haven't booted them yet. We will see this week.
So this week with the Zone we killed our goal (3 baptisms a week). We baptized 7 in the zone this week. The sisters received a reference from their bishop of a family. A family that lives pretty dang far from the chapel (50kilo) but these people have 4 kids who wanted to be baptized. Two sets of twins. Guys and girls. 13 and 14 years old. How does this happen? Only God knows. We set it up so we would have the Zone Leaders and the District Leaders in the same place to do the interviews fast (Sunday morning) so everyone could go to church and be confirmed after the baptisms. It was a great experience and these kids were really really excited and were just super ready to be baptized. Don't ask me why their parents waited for them to be baptized but it made for a great week for the missionaries. The sisters were dying of happiness. The others sisters in the Zone had 3 more. When the Assistants called and I told them we had 7 baptisms they said they had a festa in the mission office and everyone was yelling. It was funny. It's fun to pass 7 instead of 1 or 2. haha.
This week we will have to talk about maintenance to keep our excitement up. And we had a deal that we would have a "party" if we reached our goal. So tomorrow will be a good meeting. I'm going to print out the talk from Elder Ballard too so that our missionaries can burn the members with it at our lunches. Not burn,,,, but ,,, you know. We really need references from the members because doing the work alone doesn't really work in this zone.
Well the Lord blessed us this week. I knew there would be a light at the end of this baptismless tunnel. We worked super hard to earn this and will continue earning it too. Baptisms aren't free! And the power of fasting is real. Everyone fasted these past couple weeks and it came through. This Church is true. Christ lives. Amen.
Love you family. Excited to see where Landon gets called. (Brazil)
Elder Dallin Stephen Carroll
So this week with the Zone we killed our goal (3 baptisms a week). We baptized 7 in the zone this week. The sisters received a reference from their bishop of a family. A family that lives pretty dang far from the chapel (50kilo) but these people have 4 kids who wanted to be baptized. Two sets of twins. Guys and girls. 13 and 14 years old. How does this happen? Only God knows. We set it up so we would have the Zone Leaders and the District Leaders in the same place to do the interviews fast (Sunday morning) so everyone could go to church and be confirmed after the baptisms. It was a great experience and these kids were really really excited and were just super ready to be baptized. Don't ask me why their parents waited for them to be baptized but it made for a great week for the missionaries. The sisters were dying of happiness. The others sisters in the Zone had 3 more. When the Assistants called and I told them we had 7 baptisms they said they had a festa in the mission office and everyone was yelling. It was funny. It's fun to pass 7 instead of 1 or 2. haha.
This week we will have to talk about maintenance to keep our excitement up. And we had a deal that we would have a "party" if we reached our goal. So tomorrow will be a good meeting. I'm going to print out the talk from Elder Ballard too so that our missionaries can burn the members with it at our lunches. Not burn,,,, but ,,, you know. We really need references from the members because doing the work alone doesn't really work in this zone.
Well the Lord blessed us this week. I knew there would be a light at the end of this baptismless tunnel. We worked super hard to earn this and will continue earning it too. Baptisms aren't free! And the power of fasting is real. Everyone fasted these past couple weeks and it came through. This Church is true. Christ lives. Amen.
Love you family. Excited to see where Landon gets called. (Brazil)
Elder Dallin Stephen Carroll
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